I graduated eight premade guys from Sim State and moved them into Pleasantview to play out their lives. They all got married either to townies or other Sim State graduates. There were a lot of kids--four sets of twins out of eight families!--plus one alien abduction, one death and subsequent resurrection into a different household, some cheating, and a couple of divorces. The oldest kids just got shipped off to university.

Kevin Beare got caught cheating in the most unexpected way. I was playing Brandi Broke, and she had invited her married boyfriend Kevin over. Then, Kevin's wife Naenae just showed up on Brandi's doorstep, uninvited, and rang the doorbell. She and Brandi had 0/0 relationship. Brandi's daughter let her in just as Brandi and Kevin were engaging in a flirt. Slapping ensued. I have to believe that Naenae had her suspicions, based on how many times Brandi had been calling Kevin lately, and decided to see for herself. Well, she did.

Strangetown is wrapped up for the rotation. Most of the families did the work-and-school routine without much else happening.
The Curious brothers welcomed Vidcund's son Nicolai and Lazlo's twins Paul and Marie. Pascal's Hildegaard learned to walk. Vidcund has decided to ask Erin Beaker to marry him, and Erin Beaker has decided that she wants Vidcund to ask her to marry him, so that'll happen next rotation unless something goes wrong in between. Lazlo is feeling very . . . stuck. He's not sure about the alien parenthood thing, he hasn't got a girlfriend, and the only thing he's really enjoying these days are his fruit trees. But part-and-full aliens are required to live in Strangetown, so . . .

The newcomer in the neighborhood is young Ash Wood, formerly of Emerald Heights. He's enlisted in the Army, he didn't have the grades for college, and he's excelling so far. It's not what he wants to do, but it's a job, it's a roof over his head (the barracks run under $200 a week) and he's learning some useful skills and making some friends. His sister Holly showed up at the pool when he went down there after work, so he's happy about catching up with her, too. Life out from under his parents' roof definitely has things to recommend it, even if he's got little money and few possessions.

So what's happening in my game?

...bees. Bees are what's happening. RUN.



Jack just wanted to go for a nice walk through nature... poor sod.

Or is it wasps? Because the notification said "bees" but the interaction said "wasps". Whatever they are, they stings!

It's been an eventful years for the Broke and Dreamers since the previous post. Story progression decided that Della and Darius as twins would marry two of the Newsons. Darius married Gabriella Newson and Della married Gallagher Newson, they have daughters of their own. Ocean Dreamer got with a CAS sim, Amos Wave and had a son (and yes, I briefly thought of Ocean taking the surname so he can 'Ocean Wave' but decided the Dreamers name needed to live on ). Darren Dreamer had passed away as well after seeing the grandchildren he obtained.

Now back to the Broke side of the family. They are no longer broke. In fact, Dustin reached Level 9 of Criminal career with a 50K bonus, and his wife, Sophie reached the top of the Criminal career with a 60K bonus. They have since upgraded that trailer home into a sizeable house. Sophie being more financially responsible opened up individual bank accounts dropping in their bonuses for a rainy day. They raised two children, one daughter went to University with good grades. She decided to move into Don Lothario's home to be a live in nanny for him and Nina's alien child, who they had very late in adulthood. Their son is currently in University.

The late Brandi Broke's 3rd son, Bennett, unfortunately died in his teen years, he was so focused on his game of chess at the Burbs during the winter, he not only froze but starved to death. Beau moved back in with Dustin after the tragedy, and being a Romance sim, he not only helped raise Dustin and Sophie's kid while they worked, he also courted many men. He found his true match though with a Venkat Owens, a Drama Professor. Naturally, the age difference shocked Dustin, though Professor Owens was also an adult, he was older than Dustin himself. Venkat and Beau proceeded to share lovers but eventually they both no longer feared getting married. Venkat brought in an adopted son and they had another son of their own who they're currently raising in the same household. Beau finally started working in the Culinary career, promising to finish what his mother never could in reaching the top of the career.

Now with ACR + Story progression, there was a brief scandal when I heard the love chime and it was from Dirk Dreamer kissing Sophie, his best friend's wife when Dustin invited him over to hang out and I thought Dirk was happily married with Lilith Pleasant all this time with their two daughters. Sophie fell in love too, but quickly came to her senses and proceeded to chew out Dirk for doing that and they agreed to move on and pretend it never happened. Now I'm briefly considering splitting this household, seeing how successful Dustin + Sophie and Beau + Venkat are, and who would basically inherit the original home.

I've done it again. I've added two more new Sims to Veronaville. On Monday I played the Rev. Elspeth Anderson, the Rector of St Simeon's Parish Church in Veronaville. Monday 2nd February is St Simeon's Parish Church Patronal Festival, so, accompanied by some friends (including Andrew, Julian and Garry) she went to the church to hold a special weekday service. (This also allowed me to change the settings of a Needs Freak object there, as I described in another thread.) After the service lot of the congregation went back with Rev. Elspeth to her house (The Rectory) near the church, where I had to leave them as I had some real life matters to deal with. So I opened up the game the next day, with the intention of going back to join them. . .

But of course, before playing anyone, I opened CAS, just to "roll the pacifier". Now of course I wasn't expecting any babies to be born. But that pseudo-randomiser affects any Sim generated in the game. (If you don't roll it, and an NPC generates, they will be Popularity and Aries.) And I suspect it may also affect some other in-game "random" events. And anyway I like playing around in CAS. Well, this teenage boy with Face 24 generated. Now I don't use the original Maxis face templates, but SleepyTabby's "Subtlety" ones, which are toned down version of the Maxis ones. However, even in a "toned down version" Face 24 is definitely not what you might call a "pretty face". So, by use of the various sliders, but not right-clicking on Face 1 or any of the other "prettier" faces (which I usually do) I decided to see if I could give him a face that might still allow others to grow to like him.
Ian Foster was the result. Well I liked him enough to know that I definitely wanted to see him in my game. But of course you can't bring a teen from CAS into the game without making an adult relative. So I set about making an adult.
So with a bit of tweaking I got Herbert F. Foster. ("F" stands for Frazer.) Again not what you might call "pretty", but someone I felt I could grow to like. So I made them father and son, and saved them to the game. I often change or delete CAS-created family relationships, but Herbert looks a lot older than Ian so t seemed sensible to leave them as parent and child. I reckon Herbert looks as if he might be in his late fifties. I made Ian Popularity (one of my favourite Sim Aspirations), but I made Herbert Fortune, an Aspiration I find harder to relate to. They look sufficiently different that I thought it unlikely that they were genetically father and child, so I decided to use SimPE to change Herbert's memory to say that Ian is his adopted child. The idea of a childless and aging Fortune Sim adopting an heir makes sense to me.

Having made it into my game, they needed somewhere to live. So I started to build them a house! I found a bit of space in Bow Street, in Monopolis and, on behalf of Jones & Moltke, started to build a small 2 bedroom single story house there.
11 Bow Street is the result. Well, Herbert F Foster may be a Fortune Sim looking for an heir to leave his fortune to, but it doesn't look like he's made his fortune yet! The house cost under §14K. So Herbert and his adopted boy still have over §6K of their initial funds left. Herbert wants Ian to be an overachiever, so as a dutiful and loving son, Ian applied for and got a job in fashion that was advertised in the morning paper. (Few of my teens take jobs, because the pay for teen jobs is low, and most of them would rather go out clubbing!) A glitch caused the paper to disappear when Ian accepted the job offer, so Herbert will have to wait till tomorrow to get one, unless he actually goes out job-hunting. Several Monopolis locals, living nearby, have come to visit them and they've just finished a meal of luch meat sandwiches prepared by Ian.

I suspect both of them are gay. (It would explain why they've chosen to come and live in the Grand Duchy of Veronaville.) But so far only Ian has done anything about it. But he quickly realised that Jess Shaikh, the local paperboy is just not his type, and Jess is the only person his own age that he's met so far!

Of course I never got round to seeing how Rev. Elspeth and her gang are getting on at The Rectory. As Scarlett O'Hara said at the end of Gone with the Wind, "I won't think about that today. I'll think about that tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is another day."

A series of unexpected power outages interfered with my plans for my new hood, but, hopefully, I can start playing today! I have downloaded some lots, because I don't want to spend too much time on building right now - I have not even started making my new families. But I do know what they will look like

I have wrapped up another week in Strangetown and now it may be time to let it rest for a while again, although there has been much drama lately! It takes me a long time to play each round there (one day each) because the families are now so old and intertwined. I think Lazlo is on his last day, and Johnny is also nearing the end for some reason. At least Johnny has a chance of topping the Show Business career before he goes.

Gvaudoin Tricou, vampire, was stopped from feeding on her friends by her husband, Tycho Curious, but she kept doing it in secret. Tycho caught her and left her as a consequence. Gvaudoin then got a very bad want, but I guess she is a vampire and therefore has no soul. She lured Tycho over and drained him dry, killing him.

However, Tycho's good friend and husband of his cousin is Ailfrid Beaker, who has inherited the Beaker lack of morals. Ailfrid recently acquired a cowplant from work. He wanted it because he had previously had to resurrect his wife, Luna, after she died, and now there was a big age gap between them that he wanted to narrow. Ailfrid decided to kill two birds with one stone and avenge his friend. He got Gvaudoin to come over and showed her his cowplant. The scheme worked, and Ailfrid got three more days of life out of it. Since he also possessed the means for resurrection, he was able to bring Tycho back from the dead as well.

I have completely given up on the ongoing soap opera that is the Grunt family. Magnus and his brother Turner (Tank and Almeric's sons) have been competing for the same women since they were teens. Turner is now living with Johnny and Ophelia's daughter, Jeannie, and they have a son together, but Magnus is in love with Jeannie too. Worse, he is completely obsessed with her. No amount of dating could get his mind off her. Since Magnus is living with his dads following his divorce (a whole other mess), Turner and Jeannie would come by from time to time to visit. Finally, Magnus couldn't stand it anymore and decided to kiss Jeannie passionately in front of everyone. I think that was the last straw for his relationship with his brother. He then blatantly asked Jeannie to move in with him and leave Turner, and she said yes! Magnus is determined to marry Jeannie, despite her being a Romance Sim who left him at the altar once before. Meanwhile, poor Turner is one of the saddest sacks in town--but still one of my favorite Strangetown residents!

Suzanne Gardner got expelled from university.

I've never had this happen before - I've had one sim on Academic Probation, but he managed to pass on the second attempt. But I'm playing with rules that sims have to want to study, or at least fear failing and be below a passing grade. And Suzanne and her twin brother Sidney just did not want to study after their first semester. They did at least both go to class for their second semester, and somehow Sidney scraped through with a good mood for the final exam, but Suzanne didn't. And then their third semester both of them wanted to skip class, and with the mods I have the final exam wasn't enough. Interestingly both twins rolled "Influence someone to do my assignment" just before their exam... but it was too late then.

Anyway, Suzanne is now on her way home again, after a fairly humiliating university experience - she shouldn't have gone at all, it seems. Sidney is still there, on Academic Probation, so we will have to see if he can manage to pass without the distraction of his sister.

In my Story Progression Pleasantview Dirk and Sophie are married with children. Sophie is such a meanie, and I don't understand how Dirk can stand it.

I finally wrapped up my college rotation. Congratulations to the class of 2026! We have super small graduating class this year. We've got Glen Ercan, Rick Ercan, Jacob Landgraab, and Brett Williams II. Unfortunately Daryl Ercan dropped out at the beginning of his senior year and didn't get to graduate with his brothers Rick and Glen.

Now that Jacob has graduated he had decided to make things official with Heather Worthington before heading back home, but not before quickly regretting it right as the words were coming out of his mouth. You see, there's supposed to be a big "single's mingle" soon and he should have just waited until after that to make things official. After all he's been hooking up with both Heather Worthington and Kahleesi Morgan for the last two years and before that it was a couple of other girls on campus. Unfortunately for both him and Heather Worthington, she now has a bun in the oven. Really feeling the pressure now (it's definitely at about pressure cooker level) he proposed to her during his graduation party.

Once home Jacob had hoped he would have some more time to process everything and start preparing, but he wasn't even home 11 hours that he got a phone call from Heather telling him to meet her at the hospital in downtown Bluewater Village. After 8 hours of labor, they welcomed baby Jacob Landgraab II. Heather also broke the news to him that she wouldn't be returning to school and that she and the baby would be going home with him.

Welcome to the real world Jacob. You wanted to play house didn't ya?

Some catching up with the Beaker and Curious families:

During their college years, Circe was growing much more distant from her relationship with Vidcund, as well as growing closer to the much more like-minded Loki. This came to a crashing end when on the night she planned to be the last they spent together, Vidcund made a badly timed marriage proposal, which was rejected. Things would still work out in his favor, as lifelong friend Erin Beaker took the opportunity to finally confess her feelings for him, which Vidcund had been oblivious to yet pretty obvious to Pascal and Lazlo for years. All 4 of them are living at the hilltop observatory while Pascal is awaiting his unexpected child, but it wouldn't be the only unexpected child for the brothers.



Loki Beaker inherited the massive mansion/laboratory that was maintained by both of Loki's and Circe's respective parents, and is currently running the tech superstore "Compu-Global Hyper-Mega Tech" based out of Valle Muyvoda, alongside his scientific career. After spending a rough several teenage years as a vagabond, Vernous Fantasm manged to regain contact with the kind-hearted Pascal and Erin, the latter of which would point him to her brother who might be interested in letting him be a live-in caretaker for the mansion. The former would respond to his sudden emotional attachment and the two would form a romantic relationship.



Loki and Circe would pretty quickly join together as husband and wife, she didn't account for her last night with Vidcund before they broke up to result in an unexpected daughter, Elrena Salamis. Loki isn't bitter about this, as he understands she was conceived before they were together and they have Vernous to help take care of her. Cutely enough, she was born with same personality as Vidcund, who she almost hit friendship status upon their first meeting.

Andrew and Julian always like to go downtown for a date on St. Valentine’s Day, and this year was no exception. They had had woohoo in bed the night before, despite Jack Gill and Archie Cornwall playing chess in their bedroom. Gloria and Garry had woohoo too, but they didn’t have an audience.

Ravi Bertino was visiting them, and had spent the night in the hot tub. In the morning he went into the house and made five portions of omelette, one for himself, and one for each of the family. But Gloria and Garry had to leave for work without eating theirs. So only Andrew and Julian were left to eat breakfast with him. After breakfast they both hugged and kissed him before saying goodbye. Julin and Andrew wanted their Valentine’s Day date to be just for the two of them. It was Julian who asked Andrew on the date. They played a little in the front garden, before they left on their date. First they took a taxi downtown to PaintBoyz, but Mrs. Crumplebottom arrived at the same time as they did. She was in an extraordinarily good mood, evidently she's thinking of getting married. But she's really not the ideal companion for a dream date, so Andrew immediately phoned for a taxi. Julian did manage a kiss while they were there, which Mrs. C. didn't seem to disagree with. It was a very chaste family kiss with his little brother Hans! As they were leaving, she was telling young Hermes Hunter to put his clothes on.

Then they took the taxi to The Hub, where they enjoyed the rest of an exceptionally good Valentine's Day dream date. When the date ended, Andrew celebrated by noogieing Julian! Then they went upstairs for a delicious meal in The Hub's famous rooftop restaurant. Andrew had a Filet Mignon, while Julian, who has a sweeter tooth, chose a nectarine tartlette.

Before going home, they went back to PaintBoyz, where, this time in the absence of Mrs. C., they had a good time, doing things that they maybe shouldn't do.

After they got home, Andrew bought a bouquet to thank Julian for the date. Instead of leaving it at the front door as most Sims do, he carefully placed it on the floor of the downstairs bathroom.

Unfortunately I was really busy the last month, so I didn't have much time, BUT I have taken a bunch of screenshots and explored the old neighborhood of the Sims 2 installation on the old laptop from 2006.
As soon as I have more time, I'm definitely going to open up a thread, maybe in the pictures section, and give you all a tour around my literally 20 years old Sims 2 neighborhood :D

As for my "current" game, I plan on ending some family trees, since Gloomwood Valley is literally full of Sims. I don't know how I'll plan out the stories yet exactly, but I have some vague ideas.
My self-sim and the self-sim of my wife are definitely staying though. And my favorite gay artist couple gets to stay around as well. :D

Three families have moved in - I am proudly state that their houses look exactly the same - in my new hood. Lost some of my defaults, not sure what I did with those files, but, as for the rest, I am slowly getting into the new game.

The Porters seem as if they may be entertaining - Husband went straight for the gnome (to play with it, not to kick it) while his wife chose to smell the roses (or daisies, or whatever I planted there). I sent them fishing but they only caught boots (Benjamin Long was pulling out golden trout after golden trout right next to them).

Fun, fun, fun. At least the power is back for now, but lightning hit quite hard here where I live. Woke up at around 4am with a bed shaking underneath me, and my internet said good-bye. The windows rattled and a bunch of car alarms went off in the parking area. I have now patiently (apart from the 3 tantrums I threw during the 8 phone calls with my provider) waited for 4 days for the technician to come out and fix it and am getting my ducks in a row for the 4th tantrum tomorrow morning. Exhausting. At least, no sim in no my new hood has been struck by lightning yet.